2023 FUTURE OBSERVATORY
2023 FUTURE OBSERVATORY
The next stage in the development of IT networks will allow consumers to engage in a, more or less, genuine dialogue with their suppliers. I have to qualify this as 'simulated dialogue', because suppliers with millions of consumers will still have to mediate this dialogue through computers; but the advantage will go to those with the most 'human' computer - the one which is easiest and most effective (and friendly!) for individuals to deal with. This is not the same process as those hopeful advertisers on Internet are currently engaged in; what they offer is much more like the small ads in a newspaper, with much the same likelihood of success!
Instead, reduced to its simplest level, the individual consumer will negotiate with the individual supplier to agree what is to be supplied; and how it is supplied - which may then rapidly undermine retailer power. Of course, the negotiation will rarely be in such depth; consumers will not find it productive to negotiate their supply of canned beans in this way - and Heinz certainly won't! But they may use their computer to find which shop that day offers the best package, and price, to meet their current needs; even if these needs change on almost a daily basis. This would, in fact, be a very simple process. You would enter the list of items you wished to purchase, specifying those where you wanted a named brand and those where you would accept the lowest priced commodity. The computer would then cost the whole list, for each of your local supermarkets, and tell you which one was cheapest. Indeed, it might even save you the trip - by also ordering the goods to be delivered to your home!
In any case, physical goods are likely to represent an ever smaller proportion of trade. Increasingly it will be software, and information, traded (often person-to-person) across the net.
16 May 2003
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